The State of Small Business Report – Part 2
By Evan Carmichael on April 6th, 2010
Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland recently came out with a “State of Small Business Report” to take the pulse of what small business owners thinking. They surveyed 1,000 entrepreneurs and over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some of the results that came back.
Last time the discussion was on Creativity as a strategy for success. This week I want to focus on the boom in social media.
Week 2: The Boom In Social Media
One technology application that is experiencing substantial growth is a social media presence, such as having a blog, FaceBook page or LinkedIn profile. The incidence of small businesses having a social media presence has doubled from 12 percent to 24 percent in the past 12 months.
“Almost one out of five small business owners actively uses social media for a part of their business.”
Almost one out of five small business owners actively uses social media for a part of their business. The main types of social media uses include:
- A company page on a social networking site (75 percent)
- Posting status updates or articles of interest on social media sites (69 percent)
- Building a network through a site like LinkedIn (57 percent)
- Monitoring feedback about the business (54 percent)
- Maintaining a blog (39 percent)
- Tweeting about areas of expertise (26 percent)
- Using Twitter as a service channel (16 percent)
Does social media pay?
The majority of small business owners who use social media – 58 percent – feel the medium has so far “met expectations.” Another 12 percent feel it has “exceeded expectations” but twice as many, 26 percent, feel it has “fallen short of expectations.” The major accomplishments of social media so far are related to marketing and service, and
include:
- Identifying and attracting new customers (61 percent of users)
- Developing higher awareness of the business in its target market (52 percent)
- Staying engaged with current customers (46 percent)
“Half (50 percent) of users feel it has used up more time than expected.”
Social media also helps some small businesses to collaborate effectively with their network of suppliers, partners and colleagues (35 percent) and among employees (21 percent). This collaboration has the potential to spur productivity and creativity among small businesses as their connectivity rises exponentially.
Social media is not without problems. For example, half (50 percent) of users feel it has used up more time than expected. Only 17 percent feel social media has resulted in allowing people to criticize their business, though experts would note this provides a chance to engage critics (only 6 percent feel social media has hurt the business image through negative comments more than helped it). How has social media affected the bottom line of small business?
- Looking at the past 12 months, only 22 percent believe social media use has been profitable; 19 percent believe it lost money, and 53 percent believe it just paid for itself.
- The future is brighter as small business owners learn to master the medium. Almost half (45 percent) expect social media to be profitable in the next twelve months.
Are you using social media to build your business? How are you using it effectively so you’re not just wasting time?
I’ve love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
Categories: Other
Tags: 12 months, attracting new customers, blog, boom, business report, creativity, last time, marketing, media presence, network solutions, small business owners, small businesses, social networking site, status updates, substantial growth, target market, technology application, Twitter, university of maryland
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Social media is the cheapest and best media to transfer our views to a vast number of people in no time.So whichever small business owners have used the media they have profited from it.It is strongly advised to the rest of the small business world to follow the same path and enhance your business.
I’ve been using social media (specifically Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Facebook) for about 18 months. I would say that the results have been very good. I get a lot of traffic from these two sites, guiding folks back to specific content on my website that is of interest to them…so it’s targeted traffic (evidenced by a higher conversion rate — signups to our newsletter — than the site overall.)
I also have met and built relationships with dozens of people I never would have “run into” otherwise. I’ve found clients via social networking; I’ve also used social media to promote those clients.
I think the key to managing the time you spend is three-fold:
1. Decide how much time you are going to spend, then do that and no more. You might decide to spend an hour or a half-hour every morning. Or 15 minutes after lunch and 15 minutes after dinner. Set a timer if you need to. I personally will spend 10-15 minutes 2-3 times a day, when I’m in a natural break from other work. Be selective about how you spend that time, too. You can’t read every tweet (unless you choose to have just 100 friends) so use tools that let you group your friends and divvy up your time between those groups. Don’t forget to respond to @’s! (tweets/posts where people mention you directly).
2. Decide if, and how much, you can outsource social media tasks. I DO NOT advocate outsourcing everything — if you do that, you are completely missing the point (be social!) But there ARE tasks you can outsource. For instance if you like to post inspirational quotes as part of your social media presence, your VA can do that for you. I post notifications of upcoming teleclasses listed on my site; my VA actually writes and posts those for me. Anything that is routine and doesn’t need your personal stamp on it is ok to outsource. DON’TS: Don’t outsource posting that is meant to sound like you wrote/tweeted it. One example is having someone tweet for you when you are on stage giving a talk. It’s ok as long as it’s clear it isn’t you — Andrea Lee recently had a staff member tweet during her three-day event and at the end of every post was the code ^4AJL. Also don’t outsource responding to @’s; you need to do those yourself — they are conversations that need your personal attention.
3. Decide if, and how much, automation is appropriate for you. One example is automating tweeting/posting of new blog posts; this can be done with several different tools. Another is automated following — if your goal is to reach a large group of people, you aren’t going to have time to review each one to decide to follow, so there are various tools that can help with this.
This is an excellent article for the small business owners. Social media is reliable and good source of traffic for the small business owners.The explanation of social media within the report is informative and useful to all I like this great article.Thank for sharing.
This is an excellent article.It not only tells but also teaches us how to become a good business person. This informative article will help entrepreneurs become successful!
Use of internet has become very common and very useful in all sectors of society and in every field.Even some countries like South Korea,the Government so encouraging to this service that its people are getting fast internet service at very subsidized price.The point to consider inspite all these,a small percentage of small business sectors are familiar with use of internet service and social media advertising and most small business people hardly familiar with such useful advantage.
Good post terri,
I also feel that time management plays a large role in having a sucessful social media strategy. Why do you think 22 percent said social media was not profitable for them?
Jeff
Thanks, Jeff.
If I had to guess, based on some questions folks are posting right here on evancarmichael.com forums, I’d say they don’t see it as profitable because they aren’t seeing clicks turn into sales. And I’d say they are missing the point. My ROI on Twitter and Facebook isn’t the sales that I make — it’s the relationships I have built. Some of those turn into subscribers, which is an ROI of sorts. But the most important ROI is the people I’ve met who I’ve gotten to know and respect, who like and retweet what I post, who tell others about me, and vice versa. Some of those relationships eventually turn into clients, but that’s not why I’m there…and that I think makes all the difference.
This is a very good for small business owners.It is very informative and useful to all.It is a good post.
Does social media pay?
Large corporations have a far greater budget and manpower to use and monitor the social networks. I really wonder, for the case of small businesses, if they have the resources to effectively use social media and also to properly gauge its effectiveness.
While it’s not exactly rocket science, there’s no proven method of success or performance metrics yet.
Maybe it’s time for someone to develop a all-in-one social media solution for small businesses?
I think the Boom In Social Media is because of it keeps connected remote people and its other advanced and easy-to-use feature are those enjoyed by people.
I just posted my first couple of articles on EC (they’re not live yet or I’d provide a link), and one of them is the first part of a series I’m writing on utilizing social media for a small business. I’ve found it to be very helpful, but at the same time, as a small business owner, I have limited time and limited resources. My time spent on social media must be efficient. Our blog drives traffic to our site. Facebook has brought us new customers from old friends. But for me the jury is still out on Twitter.
Social media connects everyone without boundaries. It will grow by 100%.
Why small biz owners use it?
Most of the independent biz owners don’t know how to use it, but they wants their presence felt online too. There is no platform on the internet to get in touch with potential customers. Website and e-commerce displays products and thing. The talking and interactive can be offered only by social media platforms. So, it should grow bigger and biggger.
Evan – I look forward to your report in the coming days.
Robert